The Meaning of Loos
by Fire Lady Ursa
Summary: Catarina Loss hears about Ragnor Fell's death from an old friend.


_A/N: Did you know Catarina Loss's full name translates to Pure Loss? I learned that while setting up to roleplay her. Anyway, this is a little one-shot drabble set within City of Glass. Magnus found out that Ragnor Fell was dead and went on to make a deal with Clary Fray to help her mother. But... he still had a dead friend to attend to, and another friend back home who would feel the loss as sorely as he must have. So this is set between seeing Magnus at Ragnor's cottage, and the next time we see him._

It hadn't entirely sunk in, truly. Not while he was talking with Clary and the boy he'd had to freeze. His heart ached, but Magnus was good at pushing that ache away. He was immortal, he had survived the death of so, so many of his friends. Yet this one was perhaps one of the most shocking. Warlocks lived forever, and Magnus had been friends with Ragnor for so long he had begun to imagine they would be friends _forever_ as antagonistic as their relationship may have been. They meant the world to one another, they always stood beside each other, when it mattered. There was a third side to their little triangle. Catarina.

Catarina wouldn't know yet. He could send her a message, could even call her with the phone in Ragnor's cottage, but both options were too impersonal for this sort of news. Besides, seeing her would help him, a little, he hoped. Would ease the ache in his chest as it reminded him that he still had things to live for. They always had things to live for, but every death... every death made it just a little harder.

Here, outside of Alicante, he could create a portal, so he did. It was an alley he had portaled into a hundred times, just a short walk from the hospital where Catarina worked, where Jocelyn Fairchild slept in her silent coma. The security guards were used to seeing him, and so they didn't comment. The lady at the front desk was more surprised to see him. Generally Magnus kept to waiting outside for her, but today... today it was too important.

He tried to impress this upon the mundane woman, insisting that he had to speak to Catarina. Fortunately Catarina happened to be coming through the Lobby at that moment, probably on her lunch break and she saw him. Magnus saw her notice how _under-dressed_ he was, all things considered. He also knew she was running over the days in her head, trying to figure out if she'd missed one of their meetings. He motioned, expression almost pleading with her silently.

That seemed to decide Catarina, she strode across the room and took his hand, pulling him off to one side. The staff could think what they wanted, could think they dated or that he was a wayward patient, neither of them cared. "What's wrong?" He heard her ask, her voice tight and flat. She was concerned, he could tell. Concerned because this was a broken pattern. Magnus didn't break this particular pattern unless it was important, at least not like this.

"I need you to get out of work. We need to talk. This isn't something I can just tell you and let you go."  
"Magnus..."  
"I don't ask things like this lightly, Cat." His voice was tight, he could hear it. Could hear the way the tightness in his throat - the knot that he refused to acknowledge was tears - changed his voice.  
Catarina frowned, clearly concerned. Magnus was melodramatic sometimes, but... "Stay here. Give me ten minutes."

Magnus nodded, reluctantly, and sat down in one of the chairs. Catarina paused at the front desk, asking the woman there to let him stay and not to bother him, assuring the woman that he was a friend and he was harmless. And then Catarina vanished from sight, presumably to see about getting herself out of work.

* * *

It was easier than Catarina had expected, to convince them to let her go home, claiming some family emergency. Catarina didn't leave early often. Her boss insisted that she go, and told her to take a few days if she needed to. Catarina nodded emphatically, but she knew that she wouldn't. Even if it were a true crisis chances were she'd be back at work tomorrow. That was how things worked, the world kept turning no matter what else. But Magnus was upset, had sounded suspiciously close to crying. Frankly, Cat was terrified of what she was going to learn.

It was under the ten minutes she had requested of Magnus when she returned to the lobby. He met her halfway across the room, but Cat didn't pause, instead motioning for him to follow her. "Your place or mine?" Was all she said, and that was only after they were outside in open air.

"Yours is closer." Magnus' voice was carefully even.

Catarina wasn't sure what to make of that flat statement. It wasn't as if distance was much of an issue. She could have them in Peru in a heartbeat if she wanted... well. He was banned from Peru, but that was beside the point, at the moment. Instead of arguing she nodded and started off down the street.

It took less than another ten minutes to get to her apartment. It wasn't much, there was a reason they usually went to Magnus' place.

A well-worn but comfortable couch dominated the main room. Magnus sank upon it, lounging in a way that was almost normal for him. There were odds and ends scattered throughout the room - pictures, paintings, bits and pieces that told stories, if one knew what they looked at. These were the stories of her long life - and Magnus knew most of them. Even so, she noticed his catlike eyes flickering over them all. They stopped on a picture that had been taken perhaps ten years ago, of an unlikely looking trio - none of the three had been glamoured in that picture. They stood before the camera as their true selves - blue skinned, green skinned, and cat eyed. Catarina knew which picture he stared at without following his gaze - Magnus was on her left in that shot, Ragnor was on her right. They'd look surprisingly happy, for the times.

"Would you like something to drink?"  
Magnus nodded slightly.

Catarina shed her glamour as she wandered into the kitchen to make Magnus something. Sure, she could have summoned something, but this was normal. This was not as rude to the mundane establishments, either. It didn't take her long before she returned handing Magnus a glass and settling down beside him with a glass of her own. "Now... what's going on?"

At some point he'd taken her cue and dropped his own glamour. Catlike eyes met blue, and they shone oddly. Now, they always glittered, Catarina had noticed it before. But now they shone almost as if they were too wet. Almost as if- well it would explain the odd tone to his voice. But truly what distressed Magnus so?

He was silent for several moments, dropping his gaze to the glass in his hands. "Magnus." Catarina murmured, trying to draw him back to her. "Please, you're frightening me."

"I got a message from Ragnor." Magnus had lapsed into Spanish, the language of her birth, and one he had always been so very familiar with. His grasp tightened on the glass enough that Catarina was afraid he may break it. She took it from him, setting it on the table along with her own, and took his hands between her own. It was an idle motion - there was nothing sexual in it, but it was very intimate somehow, all the same. They'd been friends nearly their whole lives, Catarina owed her very life to Magnus. But this...  
"What about?"  
"He was afraid. Something was wrong. I went to him - but I was too late. He left another message, about where the antidote for Jocelyn could be found. But I found him dead. Demons... demons killed him."

For a moment there was absolute stillness. Catarina stared at him, almost uncomprehending, as if she had trouble understanding the words even though both of them knew better. That stillness was broken by a sharp intake of breath.

Cat released his hands to move around and hug him properly, clinging to his larger, solid form. Clinging as she struggled not to cry and felt his hands slide around her smaller, lighter frame. "I'm sorry." She heard him whisper in Spanish.

There were no more words after that. But they stayed together clinging to one another for comfort for what felt like an age. They cried, sharing in grief that was overwhelming and crushing and unfair. Shared in grief, because for a moment that was all the world was big enough for.

But together they could pick up the broken pieces, and come sunset the world would begin to darken and they would pull themselves together and pick each other's missing pieces up and begin to reassemble the puzzle. They were immortal, all they could do was bear the unbearable. All they could do was keep living, keep moving, keep dancing. But it was hard sometimes, so very hard. For now, for tonight, they had each other, and it would have to be enough. Because tomorrow life would continue on.

Immortality was not a gift, but a curse. For one day, all things returned to the earth.


End file.
